Is it my impression or are things devolving?

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There are opportunities to use your skills for positive impact. I know because I found one, and I’m working on tools which people use to improve and save lives.

Well, I should clarify: I had the luck of having the opportunity brought to my attention by a friend who knows my values and wondered if I’d be interested. I may have found it on my own, but I don’t know!

Assuming I wouldn’t have (which is a pretty safe assumption, I wasn’t aware of any of the projects or relevant technologies which would’ve put it on my radar), what brought this opportunity to my attention was having long term connections outside of tech with people who share my values, and enough familiarity that there was a tech overlap that my friend recognized I might be interested. I met the friend through protest circles, the intro for the opportunity came almost 20 years later.

That’s not to say that kind of timeline is inevitable. It’s to say I’m overwhelmingly happy to be doing meaningful work today, and I think it’s unlikely I’d be able to say so if I’d been focused on the career path to this.

My sincere advice is to build relationships with people who are working on issues you care about outside of tech or at least make those connections outside of a tech context. If you want to make the world a better place, people already working on that are much much better people to know than people discussing the topic on a forum (regardless of all of the good things about HN) bourn of startup VC funding.

If you’re socially inclined, go to a neighborhood or a community group meeting organizing around something you care about, instead of a tech-centered meetup. If you’re looking for inspiration or news about how tech is having a positive impact, take some time off HN and start finding sites where those are the focus.

Edit: deleted the thing which might be construed as promoting my team’s projects. If you want to know, I’m easy to contact. I’d hate for this to be misinterpreted as some kind of shill.

It can be argued that news can still be obtained elsewhere and I'd agree, but that isn't the advice I've been seeing here. It's pretty much just "walk away from news and social media" without any mention to where to go instead or some sort of platitude about how "things aren't really that bad".

Ignorance isn't going to fix anything, or help people prepare for what's coming or come to terms with what's happening now.

Things right now are not great. It's not just because of doom and gloom media (plenty of things are objectively messed up, no yellow journalism necessary), it's not just because of the internet allowing us to be more aware of the issues (the internet isn't exactly new at this point, and a lack of awareness about genuine problems should concern us far more).

Your stress is not abnormal or unreasonable. We should all be feeling more stressed out right now, either because of threats to our freedoms or our democracies, or because the effects of climate change are becoming harder to ignore, or because our children are being killed in their classrooms, or because disease is spreading, or because prices have skyrocketed, or because of acts of cruelty going on around us, or any of the other problems which are developing and/or worsening.

I'll propose an alternative: Keep paying attention. In fact, if there's something in particular that really worries you then really pay attention. Learn all you can about that issue. Consider what kinds of things might improve the situation, evaluate the extent to which there are things you personally can do help improve them and to better prepare yourself if they don't improve. If you find them, take those steps. Be proactive.

If there's really nothing you can do, or you've already done all you can then keep an eye on the situation for changes and opportunities, but try to come to terms with things outside of your control because either way we're stuck with them. Instead focus your efforts on the next thing that troubles you.

Climate change isn't something you can solve on your own, but you can stay informed and prepare. School shootings aren't something you can solve, but you can vote and campaign for gun control legislation and if you have children you can take steps to help them prepare. You'll likely have to expand your search for ways to help beyond start ups. Startups are about making money, any "making the world a better place" is incidental.

I would recommend getting out of marketing. You seem to recognize that you're in a toxic industry that's hurting people. Let it go. You've got skills that transfer. Maybe you can't find work saving the world, but there are plenty of jobs that don't involve rubbing salt in our collective wounds.

Also, consider talking to a therapist because while it won't help the underlying stressors it can help you find ways to productively deal with living under the stressful times we're experiencing, and if nothing else it's one more proactive thing you can do. All that stress and anxiety is your body telling you that there is a problem and that you should act. It's telling you to make a move and to pay attention. Doing those things is far better than trying to ignore the problem and failing (because you aren't blind) and ending up stuck feeling helplessness and despair.

Finally, take care of yourself. You'll be in a better position to handle whatever the future brings the healthier you are. Stress and depression are terrible for your physical health as well as your mental state. Treat your body better if you can.

To be clear, things are NOT devolving; we hear about injustice that wouldn’t used to make it to the news and we humans have new information processing challenges to handle.

In the radio / TV age, there were only a few channels and sources of information. What you heard was curated for attention, and the only choice was to hear or not hear. And everyone heard from the same, shared sources. It was relatively expensive to spin up your own radio/tv broadcast. It was a few-to-many relationship.

In the internet + personal devices age, there’s a flood of new information sources (some automated even) AND information consumers can now be segmented down to each individual. AND the barrier to creating these many-to-many information pipes is way lower than before. So now, the onus to sorting all this information out is up to individuals: on/off, which channels, and who else “heard” what you “heard”.

More information and disinformation available requires humans to figure out and process information better - def. a challenge, but it can help _accelerate_ improvements to society as well.

- https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...

- https://mashable.com/article/best-time-in-history

I think it's a matter of perspective. If you just focus on the negatives, things will appear to be getting worse. Unfortunately, bad news sells better than good news. I think this is an evolutionary artifact: the world was much more dangerous, and it was important to avoid things that could get you killed.

Since historians are the first people to say the past was not better, maybe a deep dive into history and truly understanding the past (vs. just vicarious nostalgia[1]) would help balance your perspective.

[1] Interestingly, even gamers recall old versions of games as being better, when they were objectively worse. They just remember the good experience without remembering the bad details: https://youtu.be/1pXJqs2bgi4